


Hollowing

by shai



Category: Dark Souls II
Genre: Gen, melancholy swordfighting zombie introspection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 05:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13827792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shai/pseuds/shai
Summary: Tiny fragments of other lives cross your vision as you wander Drangleic; ghosts from other worlds who walked slightly different paths to you.





	1. Mist Gate (the Pursuer)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm playing through this game blind, and I love the setting and aesthetic and want to roll around in it, so this is going to be a series of tiny story-snippets to do just that.
> 
> Fuck yeah, weird bleak fantasy where everyone's an amnesiac zombie.

On the rampart of a broken castle, a swordwoman stabs an armoured figure with a crossbow through the sternum. It shrieks and dies, and its body dissolves away, weapon clattering as it falls to the floor.

The top of the tower is still and silent now. The woman stands alert for a minute, then lowers her blade, glancing around.

The old stone structure has not changed since she last stood here: there's still only one way forward. A half-fallen stone tower, arched doorway leaning at a diagonal, obscured by mist.

She paces in a semi-circle around it, as if hoping to get a glimpse through to the other side. No such luck. She steps forward to face the gateway square on.

She has already seen what waits on the other side: a knight, gliding above the ground, uncannily fast as it bears down on its target.

It cut her down in seconds the first time she stepped through the gate. She'd moved faster the second and third time, ducking and dodging and hiding and getting in just one or two hits back. Then on the fourth try, it speared her through the chest and lifted her into the air on the blade of its sword and she'd died more helpless and afraid than she has anywhere else in Drangleic.

She came back to herself at the bonfire and scoured the area for another way forward and found nothing.

No passageways she's missed. No other paths around this creature. Nothing that will let her avoid this fight.

Just looking at the doorway makes her chest feel tight.

The swordswoman realises her shoulders are tight with tension and makes herself turn away from the doorway. She steps over to the right to climb a few steps up the battlements. Rolls her shoulders, stretches on her tiptoes, cuts the air with her longsword.

Sighs. Sits down on the sun-warmed stone.

Undead lose a piece of themselves with each death, the people of Majula say.

The thing on the other side of that looming doorway, the Pursuer... It is stronger than her and faster, and if she loses a bit of what makes her herself with every death, it has taken several more pieces away already.

She couldn't say what she stands to gain from stepping back into range of that monster. 

Still. What's the alternative - settling down in a village of the lost, living among people who've already given up on this world? It doesn't appeal.

The adventurer pins her increasingly ragged hair out of her eyes under her helmet and steps in towards the mist again. There's nowhere to go but forward.


	2. Humanity (Lucatiel)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucatiel has forgotten why she came to this place. That puts her in good company.

"I have not thanked you for humouring me the other day. Here, this is for you. Of course, I've no idea what it is"

Lucatiel of Mirrah is holding the object in her gloved hand cautiously, like it's something fragile. It's an odd gesture on such a self-assured woman, and the undead wanderer leans in to see better, curious.

The undead wanderer recognises the object: a human effigy. Rare, and precious; and she's died already making her way through these darkened docks, she can feel her flesh starting to warp already. It's a generous gift, giving a stranger something to push back the curse's hollowing effect.

Too generous. Lucatiel is talking about why she came here, and she's forgotten. She's too wary to have talked to the people of this land much; she doesn't realise the value of the item she's giving away.

The undead hasn't spoken out loud for some time. Maybe not since those witchy women at the edge of the world asked her for her name, and she'd wracked her brains and croaked the single word 'Cinder'. Her name, she thinks. She has the urge to do so now, but no words come, so she shakes her head and presses the little shape back into the other woman's hand.

Lucatiel blinks, surprise coming across even through the mask over her face.

Cinder coughs, shakes her head, tries to reach back in time to remember how to use her voice.

What was it those women had asked her, back in that house that shone with firelight? 

"Who do you see?"

"See...?" Lucatiel asks.

Cinder gestures at the effigy.

Lucatiel pauses, frowns. But she pulls her hand back towards herself and her eyes fall to the odd little twisted shape. Her fingers unclasp around it, and her expression turns in on itself.

Light flickers around the effigy, and with the same odd instinct that had returned Cinder to herself however long ago when she first arrived in Drangleic, the masked warrior presses it in to her chest, then stumbles with the shock of coming back to herself.

Cinder smiles, remembering that rush of warmth and joy of returning to humanity. She turns away into the perpetual night of No-Man's Wharf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can't believe the only way I can affect my favourite NPC's life expectancy is by inviting her to come help me with dangerous boss fights. thanks, game >:(


End file.
